All of Doctor Who, one episode at a time!

Episode 107 – “Sky of Steel”

For those of you who are curious (hi to all three of you!), I didn’t blog yesterday because I was, and am, a bit sick. Still, you know what you need when you’re sick? A Doctor!

“And so you see from this example, that bad jokes helped usher in the eventual downfall of humanity.”

This is a fun story. It’s an island of completeness in a sea of largely missing, reconstructed episodes. It also introduces Dodo in a more proper fashion, which is kind of neat. And then we get the Monoids. Hmmm. So…Dodo and Monoids. Well, we’ll make the best of it.

Our story begins with one of the aforementioned Monoids (they have one eye, you see. In their defense, I’m sure Nobody thought it was clever!), watching various bits of wildlife, and then the TARDIS arrives.

When the TARDIS lands, Dodo pops out, wearing some knightish outfit, and sneezes. She’s dropped her accent (behind the scenes, the BBC forbid her from using it), and thinks she’s in some sort of botanical garden. Steven is confused. One would think he’d remember what it was like when he first traveled with the Doctor, but instead he’s just flabbergasted.

Back at Monoid Central, we see a human on trial for negligence. He’s not sentenced to death, as seems to be the case in pretty much every other criminal case in pretty much every piece of sci-fi ever written. Instead he’s sentenced to be shrunk down and stored away for seven hundred years. Novel, to say the least.

The Monoids don’t talk much, and everyone seems to use some sort of sign language to communicate with them. That’s actually pretty interesting, and another example of the show displaying some ambition.

Steven finds some Monoids and leaps to the conclusion that, “If this is Earth, it’s no longer inhabited by human beings.” A bit of a stretch, really. It could just be Earth with a resident alien population or something.

The people on board this ship are, it turns out, heading off to another planet to settle. It’ll take a good long time, and no one there expects to see it. Just as our travelers are relaxing and enjoying themselves, one human and one Monoid both end up sick. Turns out they have Dodo’s cold (seemed more like allergies, but there you are). They have no resistance, and now death threatens all! Etc.